It's Over, Ralph ~ By BARBARA EHRENREICH former Nader supporter

[mzmolly]

...Ralph, a lot of sewage has passed under the bridge since 2000. Back then, Al Gore was campaigning with the furious energy of an old-growth oak. George W. Bush looked like a dumbed-down version of Gerald Ford — a man who could be trusted to while away his presidency on the elliptical trainer.

Who could have guessed that within a year and a half, the genial Bush would morph into a figure invoked worldwide to scare unruly children? Or that a whole slew of candidates — Dean, Kucinich, Sharpton, Moseley Braun — would be preaching your vision of peace and social justice from within the Democratic Party?

You've changed too. If the first time was tragedy — and I will admit now, with hindsight, that it was — the second time is predictably farce. Maybe those years spent wandering in the wilderness — disdained by Democrats, excluded by arcane ballot access rules — have taken their toll, because there's been something grotesque about your campaign from the start, when you advised left-wing critics, in words no one knew your vocabulary included, to "relax and rejoice" in your run. This while casualties mounted in Iraq and civil liberties evaporated here.

In 2000, you could at least claim to be doing it all for the Green Party. This summer you didn't even bother to drop by its convention. You were in Portland, Ore., addressing an audience of 1,100 (you got almost 10 times as many there four years ago) that was heavily larded with conservatives eager to get you on the ballot to suck votes from John Kerry. When Howard Dean confronted you about your conservative "supporters," you lamely observed that "Republicans are human beings too."

And this line says it all:

I loved you for your principles, not your lean hot bod, and now you've tossed them for a few more moments in the sun.

Read on here...

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/18/opinion/18EHRE.html

[bluestateguy]

1. I don't see a Kerry endorsement in that article

Her man Dennis Kucinich has endorsed the nominee, will she?

[mzmolly]

2. Good question, it's an older article so?

We shall see. It's an ABB endorsement if nothing else ;)